Ivy Bridge runs a little hot

Overclocking your laptop could lead to great balls of fire

Some corners of the press are warning that Intel's Ivy Bridge processors might run a little too hot to be safely overclocked.

While Ivy Bridge was being touted as Chipzilla's great white hope, it might also be turning into a red hot hope too. Overclocking tests done by AnandTech, Tech Report , and Overclockers show that Ivy Bridge processors can be 20 degrees hotter than Sandy Bridge processors.

So if you push an Intel i7-3770K processor over Intel's peak 3.9GHz rating for this chip to 4.9GHz the temperature is enough to make a nice cup of tea.

If you tried the same thing on a Sandy Bridge chip running at the same 4.9GHz the temperature is only 80 degrees.

AnandTech claimed that the biggest leaps in temperatures occur when the voltage is ramped up. If you going from 1.05 volts to 1.30 volts at 4.4GHz CPU frequency, the temperature rapidly rises from a stable 65° C to more than 90° C.

This is a little weird because Ivy Bridge as supposed to be a lot more power efficient.

It looks like Intel's denser transistors might be to blame as it they are harder to cool.

Ivy Bridge's heat spreader makes contact with the CPU using thermal paste which might not be conducting heat as well as the Sandy Bridge's soldered heat spreader.

Ivy Bridge also runs using a lower operating voltage than Sandy Bridge. When you overclock it you have to bump up the voltage.

Still if you are not into overclocking this will probably not effect you at all. Read our review here.